Chapter 31
REESE
TRACK: Ashe, “Moral of the Story”
“You’re sure this is it?” I ask, peering at the paper in Nora’s lap again.
We’re sitting in my car on Cortland Street in Manhattan, outside a nondescript, beige building, smaller than the towers flanking it by half. Outside, a light snow falls, dusting the heads and shoulders of the steady stream of pedestrians heading into their office jobs.
“Reese, research is kind of my job. This is the building.”
“Right. Sorry.” Nerves tickle my stomach, right along the edges of the nausea pressing in at what I’m about to do.
“I still can’t believe he ended up working here, after all his big talk about ‘hating the man’ and ‘never conforming.’”
“Even a non-conformer has to pay the rent in Brooklyn,” Nora quips.
I laugh, shaking my head. But it doesn’t last. Neither has the thermos of coffee I prepared when we left Quince Valley at four a.m. this morning.
I watch as Nora fiddles with the settings on her camera. “Hey, Nor?”
“Yeah?” Nora looks up at me.
“Thank you for dropping everything to come with me.”
Nora smiles. “You’d do the same thing for me.”
“Yes,” I say without hesitation. “But I know you don’t love confrontation. If Michelle were in town I would have insisted she do this but…I also wouldn’t trust her not to jump out of the car and mortally wound Simon.”
“You don’t think I’d do that?”
“Nah. Not your style. You’d put him at ease by gently redirecting him while he mansplained librarianship to you. Then you’d get him talking about something completely inflammatory and somehow convince him that it would make sense to film the whole thing.”
Nora, to my surprise, lets out a big laugh. “I can’t believe you can read me so easily.”
I smile, squeezing her hand.
Then my stomach seizes, because right then, Simon walks out of the double glass doors of his building.
“Oh God, there he is,” I say, swallowing hard.
He’s wearing a coat that matches the dull beige of the building behind him, and a dark wool cap pulled over his forehead. But it’s hard to notice anything except the wide white bandage covering his nose, and dark circles under both eyes.
Dammit, Eli, why’d you have to be such a sure shot?
“Go.” Nora lifts up her camera. “I’ve got you.”
“Right,” I say, heart pounding. My hands shake as I pull my door open and hop out onto the thin layer of mid-November snow.
It’s freezing outside the warm bubble of my car, but I won’t be here long.
He’s walking fast, and I have to jog several feet to catch up to him.
“Simon!” I call.
Simon stops, turning at the sound of my voice. His eyes widen slightly, and he looks around, clearly worried. “Where is he?!”
I stop a few feet away from him, folding my arms, then thinking better of it and setting my shoulders back, my arms straight at my side.
“Eli’s not here,” I say. “Go ahead, look around.”
I give Simon a minute to examine the people walking by, the cars along the street. Nora’s visible in the passenger seat of my car, but she’s on the phone, talking animatedly to no one.
We spent the five-hour drive rehearsing all the ways this encounter could go. In all of them, she’s in the background, ready, for whatever happens next.
I angle myself so he’s forced to turn away from Nora, and behind him, she lowers her phone and pulls up her video camera instead, the lens pointing right at us. I don’t plan on using the footage; it’s for security only.
“Simon, I just want a few words.”
I can see him hesitate. He wants to talk to me. A flash of something akin to hope even shows in his eyes for a moment. Would he still want me to come crawling back to him? Even now? I can’t smile. Not at him. But I give him a neutral expression, just so he won’t run off.
As Simon opens his mouth, he cringes, the bandage crinkling. I can almost see the memory of Eli’s fist come back to him in real time. “No time, Reese. I’m heading to an appointment.”
So much for nice.
“Laura Hapness, at nine thirty. You still have a few minutes.”
Simon’s jaw actually drops.
When I asked Nora to help me figure out how to find Simon, she helped with finding his place of work and current address.
“That was just an elaborate web search,” she said when I asked for more details.
“I draw the line at hacking into his devices for more details. Just what do you think librarians are capable of, anyway?”
But then she’d done me one better. She’d called Jude and Eli’s brother, Griffin.
We gave him a rundown of the situation, and a half hour after hanging up, he called back and said Simon had an introductory meeting at big shot litigators Jones and Hapness.
“He hasn’t gone to the police yet, likely wants to see what the lawyer says first. And the only reason this guy even snagged a meeting with Hapness is by namedropping you,” Griffin warned. “And maybe Jude.”
Jude I could understand. But me? When I asked him, I could practically hear the shrug over the line. “That video. You have vulnerabilities now. It’s fine, nothing we can’t handle.”
My head had spun. “We?”
“Any friend of Eli’s gets my protection,” he says, as if that’s obvious. “I’m only telling you this information about your piece of shit ex because I know he’s not a physical threat. Anything else I’ll take care of. Good luck.”
He’d disconnected the call before I could say thank you.
“I have no idea what he does or how he does it,” Nora said. “But consider yourself safe.”
Maybe that’s why I raise my chin and take a step toward Simon now.
“How did you know what I was doing?” Simon barks. “Who I was seeing? Have you been spying on me this whole time?”
The man has lost his mind. I can tell by the way his lip curls, like he actually believes I would have finally left him and cut off all contact, only to have maintained an elaborate spying operation?
For years? I want to say all this, but I hold back, keeping it simple, like we practiced in the car.
There’s only one thing I really need to do here, and that’s ensure I never see or hear from Simon Houghton for the rest of my life.
“It’s not important how I know. It’s important what I know. I know you’re hoping Laura will become your lawyer, and that you plan on giving her all the hairy details about what happened when you broke onto our set.”
That last part was a bluff, but not hard to guess at.
Simon’s expression goes a little wonky.
“She won’t. Because you’re not going to go to your meeting. You’re going to turn around and go back to that sad little sales associate job you’ve been stuck at with no promotions for the past five years because you’re too full of yourself to have even an ounce of humility.”
Simon clenches his jaw.
“And now you’re trying to decide whether to yell threats at me or run. Or maybe try what used to work on me: laying on the sugar. Telling me how much you care about me, how you’ve always been there for me, and act hurt and confused when I stand up for myself.”
I know I’m getting emotional, so I take a breath before continuing. “But I’ll make it easy for you. None of those things will work, because I’m not afraid of you, Simon. And I’m not the same vulnerable, hopeful girl you ‘took under your wing’ all those years ago.”
Simon folds his arms, tries to look aloof. Which is difficult when his face looks like a train ran over it. “Sure you are, Reese, I can see it. I know you’re worried—”
I shake my head, making Simon trail off and frown.
“Just stop,” I say. “Simon, it’s over. You tried, very hard, to destroy me.
To crush my spirit and keep me small. For a long time, it worked.
But I think I knew, somewhere inside of me, that I deserved more.
Some part of me kept that burning ember alive, blowing on it in the darkest moments to make sure it didn’t die. ”
Simon’s eyes flicker.
“You remember the song, I can tell.” It was about an ember in the ashes. “You told me it was ‘reductive.’” The therapy I did after finally leaving him taught me that was one of his tactics. To sound academic so his points couldn’t be argued with without me feeling small and stupid.
“That part of me is what made me keep these.” I pull a piece of paper out of my pocket. It’s a copy of one of the letters. “Proof of who you really are. I’ve got all the letters, Simon, even the ones you sent up until what, last year?”
On the way here, we’d stopped at my family home on Long Island, and I’d picked the box up from my closet, only to discover dozens of unopened letters my mom must have stashed in there from after we broke up, not telling me so as not to upset me, but not throwing them out, either, because they belonged to me.
It was a very Mom thing to do, and now I’m grateful for it.
Especially seeing Simon’s face blanch at the one I pulled out. One from earlier this year, where he tells me about his new girlfriend—a girl he says reminds him of me. “Except she’s younger than you were then, Reese. Maybe young enough she’ll listen better than you did.”
The letter made my skin ice over when I found it. But that was the one I copied in Mom’s office. Because a quick web search Nora did revealed what I suspected: the girl is still in high school.
“I’ll send copies to your workplace, to start, and if that doesn’t dissuade you from pressing charges or suing and feebly trying to ruin a good man’s life, I’ll take them public.
The public might want to know about the man who tried to keep me down and instead showed me the opposite of what love is supposed to look like. ”
“I always knew you were a bitch,” Simon snarls.
It’s the first time I’ve ever seen him spew hatred like this—it’s not his MO—and for a moment, a jolt of fear trickles through me.
Then Simon surprises me further, by grabbing my wrist.
I flinch, not at his touch, but because he’s gripping the fresh bandage I have over the tattoo there.
The fear is still there, but I shake it off. I think of Eli, and Griffin, and the fact that I know, in my heart, this is the last I’ll ever see Simon Houghton.
This is his death knell.
“Whatever you’re planning,” I say, my voice as hard as his was a moment ago, “don’t. Look behind me.”
I know his eyes land on Nora’s camera, because he drops my wrist fast.
“Goodbye, Simon. Don’t ever, ever contact me again.”
Then I turn and get back in the car.
Nora waits until we drive around the corner, passing Simon—who looks so small and fragile I almost, almost feel sorry for him—before speaking.
“You good?”
“I’m good,” I say. I smile, my hands tightening on the wheel. “I’m great, Nora. Amazing.”
My buoyancy is only held back by one thing. One tight, burning, heart-beating thing.
Eli.
The man I’m still angry with. The man I’ve tried and failed to wrestle my thoughts about.
But I don’t need to think about him right now.
I can’t. I need to focus on this feeling of exhilaration rippling through me.
I turn to Nora. “I don’t want to go home yet.
Do you? We can spend the day here, pretend there’s no such thing as heartbreak and love, just for the day. ”
Nora laughs, though the sound almost cracks. I reach for her hand, squeezing it tight. I know she’s in love with Jude. It’s obvious by the way she looks at him, by the way when he throws his arm around her like she’s his best bud, she closes her eyes, just for a moment.
But I don’t say anything, and neither does she. She just squeezes my hand back. “Yeah, I took the day off, might as well make it worthwhile. And maybe you can tell me everything he said over lunch?”
“And then the big library with the lions? I know you love that place.”
“I do. But maybe we can go somewhere else?”
“Anywhere you want, Nora. I’m free as a bird.”